Vague requests really piss me off

For the record – I come from a very heavy marketing background. I made it my business to know the nitty gritty details on my products, my markets, and the overall business.

In my current gig, I am just a product manager, and we supposedly have a marketing group that handles the product marketing aspect (think the upper left quadrant of the Pragmatic framework).

However, they behave like a service (think: Kinko’s Copies). They are constantly coming to me for all the product marketing input that they need.

If my role formally had that responsibility, I would not grumble, but I am told that responsibility lies in Marketing (and bizarrely enough Business Development – picture my head explodign here), and that I am to not waste my time on it.

So, everytime I get a “request” to do the “product marketing” job, my blood pressure mounts. But, that is not the real problem.

Not only that, but what they ask for comes in a message that doesn’t tell me what the audience is, what level of detail is needed, how the material will be used/distributed, and what theme or message that they believe is needed. This is what really grinds my gears. If you need me to fill in your gaps, out of my extremely busy schedule, please, for the love of god, give me the whole context. If I have to turn a simple task into an afternoon of negotiating via email the true output, that is a big pail of fail.

Over 2 decades of product management and marketing experience, with direct experience with microscopy, imaging, networking, and enterprise software.
I can offer advice, content creation, and mentoring for product manager and product management teams.